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Friday, August 18, 2006

08/18/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- It took only six years with Bush Jr. as President to give birth to a new generation of radical political activists, journalists, and commentators, whose main concerns are subjecting the insane policies of the President to exposure and condemnation; this, it seems, constitutes the foundation for nearly the entire realm of real political opposition in the U.S.

The strategy here is limited to educating people about the destructive policies of the Republicans and hoping that in response, a protest or political movement will evolve powerful enough to either reform or displace those in power.

Education of course, is absolutely crucial in transforming any dissident organization into an entity capable of action and results. However, by focusing only on the policies of the Republicans, without explaining the larger framework from whence they came, political education is greatly hindered, limiting the potential for effective action.

Undoubtedly, the neo-conservative movement is treated with mystical awe by those responsible for criticizing it. Liberal commentators continue to respond with hysterics or dumbfoundedness at the ability of Conservatives to destroy civil liberties while thus far waging three preemptive wars (yes Lebanon is a U.S. war). It should have been clear by now— with the media and Democrats suppressing or supporting the most blatant atrocities engineered by the Republicans— that larger forces are at play.

Historically speaking, the transition from democracy to dictatorship has appeared in various forms, including military coup, civil war, election tampering and ‘emergency’ situations requiring ‘special’ powers— with Bush’s growing authority fitting into the latter two categories. Although dictatorial forms differ radically in their appearance, at bottom there remain essential common features.

A dictatorship cannot be formed from the heavens; there must be in every instance a background of interests and groups that aide the regime by finances, apologetics, or aggressive support. These interests too have a historical background, originating from their position as beneficiaries of the economic arrangement of society. Dictatorship has been, with few exceptions, performed in the service of a minority; these dictatorships have always represented the interests of the financial elite. By limiting the definition thusly, we are able to make connections with the fascists of Italy, Japan, and Germany, to the century-old dictatorships of the neo-colonial world.

It is in the interests of any ruling class to maintain government control by Democratic means, since the effort in maintaining order is less taxing, and the ease of channeling discontent through compromise and concession is increased. It must be asked then: why do these groups, who already contain tremendous wealth and prestige, trouble themselves by resorting to the barbaric and complicated policies that are implied by dictatorship, rather than keeping the less-conflicted relationships that are found under a more democratic government? We must dismiss the shallow answers of ‘greed’ or ‘insanity’ out of hand, especially when there are much more sensible answers.

To the dismay of the ruling classes, the social conditions of society change in a way they have no control over. As corporations follow the rules of profit-making, they inadvertently create at the same time an ever-widening polarization of wealth. As the rich get richer, and the poor poorer, social conditions gradually change, until the exploited classes suddenly start making demands, or begin acts of ‘anarchy’,i.e., strikes, protests, factory occupations, and rebellion. Social inequality in the U.S. has had staggering increases in the last 10 years, to the point where there are now (realistically) 45 million people living in poverty, 2 million in prison, and with the processes of a profit-based globalization and harsher criminal penalties in place, the numbers will inevitably rise.

A dictatorship is thus the necessary evil born out of the natural processes of capitalism. Heightened executive powers are needed to suppress civil unrest, create social stability, and insure the industries essential to the ‘nations’ economy are not disrupted by strikes; destroying civil liberties that allow protest, organization, and freedom of expression are timeless policies in combating a disgruntled populace.

Explaining dictatorship as a result of social inequality is especially relevant to third-world nations, where ‘order’ is needed to ensure that the countries are ‘stable’ enough to be used as a source for markets and raw-materials for their colonial masters; however, this explanation cannot be applied across the board.

For industrialized nations, the causes of dictatorship become more complex. In addition to social polarization, 1st world nations are also involved in constant economic and regional expansion— a phenomenon easily traced to the interests of the capitalists pulling the strings. A government is only as powerful as the corporate might behind it; the interdependence of nation-state and corporate interests is revealed by the fact that both are ruled by the same laws of the market, meaning, that at bottom, each are governed by the processes of either expansion and growth, or stagnation and decline. In the same way that stagnation in the corporate world equals recession or depression, so too are these principles reflected by the mediators of financial interests— the nation-state. For a country to be in decline means that its global influence is waning; it has lost influence over foreign nations, preventing the exploitation of raw materials and favored market access for manufactured goods, or rather, the country in question is unable to supply the basis for the corporations within its boundaries to dominate globally— thus, the goals of the nation-state and the corporation cannot be separated.

The activities of the present-day United States are a case in point. The U.S. has been compensating for its declining economic position with military adventurism to control the vast oil reserves of the Middle East. Proof of this assertion can be candidly found in the writings of the now-infamous Project for a New American Century (PNAC). In their ’Statement of Principles’, it says:

”We are in danger of squandering the opportunity and failing the challenge. We are living off the capital -- both the military investments and the foreign policy achievements -- built up by past administrations. Cuts in foreign affairs and defense spending, inattention to the tools of statecraft, and inconstant leadership are making it increasingly difficult to sustain American influence around the world. And the promise of short-term commercial benefits threatens to override strategic considerations”

Advocating this perspective gave the Neo-cons immense credibility within the world of big-business, who responded with record-setting campaign contributions and— in an important first step in destroying Democracy in the U.S— managed to get Bush ‘appointed’ President by the Supreme Court.

The aggressive foreign policy of the Republicans, which has found unanimous reception throughout most sections of the ruling-elite, has created immense dissatisfaction and opposition from the majority of the population. To deal with this hostility, the repressive measures detailed in the Patriot Act and illegal NSA spying program have been used to monitor, intimidate and quell protest.

Much of the same measures used to deal with third-world resistance are used likewise to handle the political opposition in the United States. Aside from having a virtual monopoly on Democracy by disallowing third-party candidates from the ballot, there are other clever tactics being employed.

The Orwellian ‘War on Terror’ has proven to be the most effective strategy that both parties continue to use in order to install fear, destroy civil liberties, and promote war. The government has effectively applied the especially-vague term ‘terrorist’ to apply to political opposition groups. Organizations like Green Peace, Food Not Bombs, and Independent Media have been— in different localities— placed on the ‘terror watch list’. This is not some random mistake, but a deliberate attempt at intimidation, revealing— aside from preemptive war— one half of the motive for the ‘war on terror’. The new ambiguous war-slogan has reached such ridiculous proportions that environmental protest-groups are called ‘eco-terrorists’, while drug traffickers are ‘narco-terrorists’— the potential for the euphemism is seemingly unlimited. In fact, the situation has deteriorated to such an extent that we are told that any criticism of the government’s policies is equal to helping the ‘Islamic fascists’.

Behind the conservative shift of nearly every industrial country in the world is the worsening profit-crises suffered by their respective corporate managers. Since the short-lived ‘tech boom’, there has only been desperateness and uneasiness voiced by international commerce, who has successfully been treading water by forcing slave-wages on the emerging economies of China and India, and thus creating the need to reduce wages and benefits everywhere. Once again, the profit-crisis is yet another inherent feature in the processes of capitalism, which creates ‘lack of demand’ –or excess supply— by constantly lowering the wages of workers to increase profit, while continuing to flood the markets of the world with products. This process takes on an especially-dangerous character when the competing industrial nations are facing the same problem, while trying to increase their positions by acquiring— by any means necessary— the worlds last remaining key-resources and markets.

Society is not, nor has it ever been, an independent arbiter of interests. Corporate profit rates— depending heavily on the impoverishment of their workers— are often used to measure the economic health of a nation. In times of economic growth and social stability, Democracy seems like a fine thing, even if there are broad layers of society who suffer from generational poverty or the horrors of homelessness. Although the world—and especially the United States— experienced unprecedented growth after World War II, these conditions have reached their natural limit. The conditions that created the foundation for class and international peace have turned into their opposite.

Exposing the policies that are destroying our freedoms while yelling ‘this cant be happening’ can raise political consciousness to a considerable extent, but it cannot direct discontent towards a sustainable solution. Impeaching Bush or defeating reactionary congressmen will not alter the current course of events undertaken by the bi-partisan agreement on militarism and war. It also seems incredibly naïve to think that the Democrats— many of whom are Ivy-league graduates and multi-millionaire businessmen— are ignorant of the motives of their so-called rivals; the Democrats are not simply ‘uninformed’ about the nature and basis of imperialism, nor can they be persuaded to take a radical path— the party itself is based solidly on the same corporate foundations as their nominal oppossition. This demands an independent strategy. Any course, if it is to be effective, must be based on the interests of the majority of the population, in stark contrast with the minority who benefit from the profit-system. The interests of the wage-earner, in comparison to that of the stock-holder, are elaborated and promoted by the program of international socialism.

If you're a teacher, student, journalist or just a plain concerned citizen interested in finding well-researched documentation about climate change, you can no longer depend on the Canadian government to supply that information.

According to Canada's Liberal Party, since early July, the country's government -- under conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper -- has been systematically scrubbing its websites of information regarding global warming and the Kyoto Protocol treaty to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

(As of Wednesday, Aug. 16, when you visit the government of Canada's Climate Change website, you find the following message: "The Government of Canada Climate Change site is currently unavailable.")

Despite its relatively short time in office, the Harper government has been repeatedly accused of following the lead of the George W. Bush administration in the United States.

Now, it appears it has taken up the Bush administration's habit of mixing science and politics by purposefully expunging information from federal websites dealing with climate change and its ramifications. In addition, in designing its new "Made in Canada" plan to deal with the environment and global warming -- a plan due to be unveiled in October -- government officials are working in secrecy and without significant participation from environmental organizations.

Harper's skepticism about global warming seems in line with the position of Pres. Bush, who has repeatedly claimed that the "jury is still out" on the issue. The prime minister has himself questioned the science of climate change, calling it a "controversial hypothesis."

His former environment critic, Bob Mills, has described the Kyoto Protocol, the international agreement to address climate change, which had been ratified by Canada's parliament during the previous government, "a great socialist plot."

According to a statement issued in late July by the Liberal Party, the Harper team "is engaging in revisionist science by systematically removing references to climate change from government websites."

"This is a government in denial about climate change," said Liberal Environment Critic Hon. John Godfrey. "They don't like the science, and now they want to censor it. This is Orwellian."

MP Mark Holland pointed out that the Harper "government is tied closely to leading climate change skeptics in the United States and the petroleum industry. This government has a track record of listening to people with dubious views on the environment and climate change. They pretend to be interested in a 'Made in Canada' approach, but this is code for doing nothing."

"The feds' own climate change site once offered a verbose, but realistic analysis of the problem [of global warming] and a high-minded, but unconvincing account of what the government was doing about it," wrote Richard Littlemore in a commentary posted in mid-July at DeSmogBlog.com.

"Never mind removing a reference to Kyoto; the words 'climate change' have been expunged from everything except the website title," maintained Littlemore, a journalist, speechwriter and senior counselor at James Hoggan & Associates, a Canadian public relations firm.

"The government's strategy of pretending to be concerned about the environment while both dismantling programs to address climate change and scrubbing government websites clean of any information proving that global warming exists has Frank Luntz written all over it," added Liberal Party MP Mark Holland.

Luntz, who met with Harper and his conservative colleagues earlier this year, is a high-profile political pollster and strategist, who has helped shape the U.S. Republican Party's political agenda and messaging for more than a decade. The New Yorker magazine's Hendrik Hertzberg recently described Luntz as the "Johnny Appleseed of such linguistic innovations as 'death tax' for estate tax and 'personal accounts' for Social Security privatization."

One section of an infamous 2002 Luntz-authored memorandum, instructing Republican congressional candidates, was titled "Winning the Global Warming Debate: An Overview." Luntz advised candidates to "continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate."

He maintained that "The most important principle in any discussion of global warming is your commitment to sound science... The scientific debate is closing [against us] but not yet closed. There is still a window of opportunity to challenge the science."

Ironically, while the Bush administration, and the Harper government, may still be sticking with this script, Luntz appears to have changed his mind on global warming. In a recent documentary first aired on the BBC, Luntz said that he "think[s] most people would conclude that there is global warming taking place, and that the behaviour of humans is affecting the climate."

When asked about the advice about climate change that he had been giving for years, Luntz said it was fair when he gave it. He added that if the Bush administration is still questioning the science, "That's up to the [them]. I'm not the administration. What they want to do is their business. And it's nothing to do with what I write. And it's nothing to do with what I believe."

The Liberal Party's press release also pointed to Harper's "close friendship" with former EnCana President and CEO Gwyn Morgan, "a leading climate change skeptic in Alberta, who Harper tried unsuccessfully to appoint to a position overseeing government patronage appointments."

"This is all about controlling information and not about controlling greenhouse gases," said Godfrey. "The government would be thrilled if the Canadian public simply forgot about global warming, and we're simply not going to allow that to happen."

Meanwhile, the Harper government has pledged to produce a comprehensive environmental initiative in October that will supposedly include programs dealing with curbing greenhouse emissions blamed for global warming. Still in its formative stages, government officials maintain that they have been seeking a broad range of views on the issue, but according to a recent report by the Chronicle Herald, "many environmental groups say they've been shut out."

"The reality is that the public has not been consulted at all," said Ann Coxworth of the Saskatchewan Environmental Society, one of the groups in the Climate Action Network, a coalition of environmental groups that has organized public forums and workshops in a number of Canadian cities.

Shortly after taking office, Harper put the kybosh on the Liberals' Project Green. The creation of the new environmental initiative appears to follow in the footsteps established by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney when he set about developing the Bush administration's energy plan. The Cheney Energy Task Force worked in secret and saw the Bush administration lean heavily on advice from utility companies, and the oil, gas, coal and nuclear energy industries, according to a report by the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The Harper project has thus far pretty much excluded environmental groups, and has been working "under tight secrecy," The Chronicle Herald reported."They're not giving us enough of what they intend to do for us to give them any significant advice on how to proceed," said John Bennett, executive director of the Climate Action Network. "We need to have a plan that all Canadians can work together on and you don't get a plan like that by going into a back room and then making an announcement six months later."

Bill Berkowitz is a longtime observer of the conservative movement. His WorkingForChange.com column Conservative Watch documents the strategies, players, institutions, victories and defeats of the American Right.

Other Recent Articles by Bill Berkowitz

* Christian Right Steps Up Pro-Israel Lobbying* Meet the Fiery Karl Zinsmeister* Nativists Declare Open Season on Undocumented Immigrants* Pastor John Hagee Spearheads Christians United for Israel* War on Christians?* Michael Joyce (1942-2006)* John Ashcroft Spreads His Wings* Foaming Campus Cleanser Sputters at Temple* The House That Jack Abramoff Built Begins to Crumble* The Tumultuous and Tawdry Travels of Neil Bush* The Mogul, the Movie and the Man on a Mission* Crony in the Bird Flu Seat* “Villains Honoring Villains”* Christmas Under Attack: A Manufactured Crisis* Rev. Pat Robertson: Dead End or No End in Sight?* Bishops and Pawns* Wal-Marting Philanthropy* Sex and the Single Nominee* Ohio Players* The Christian Right's Piece of the “Promised Land”* Bush Adopts Chunk of Heritage Foundation's Agenda to Rebuild Gulf Coast* Team Bush's African American Conundrum* David Horowitz Tackles Immigration* The Politics of Slander* Minutemen to Spread Wings* Selling Brand Kurdistan* Still Colson After All These Years* Deepening the Faith: Bush and Congress Aim to Institutionalize Faith-Based Initiative* William Greene's Angry and Mobile Rapid Response Machine* Tony Perkins' Family Research Council* “Heathens” Not Welcome at Air Force Academy* Paying to Play (Part I)* Tom Delay's Right Arm* Amway: “Masters of Deception”* Deathbed Dollars* Crusader Nation* Pope Benedict XVI's Questionable Qualifications* Rehearsals for the Rapture* The Schiavo Case's Intended and Unintended Consequences* Lurching Toward Theocracy* Team Schiavo's Deep Pockets* Super-Sized Food Industry Targets Families* Whitman's Crusade Could be Running on Empty* The Secret Wars of Judi Bari is Mean-Spirited and Loose with the Facts* Christian Right Mum on Gannon Affair* Wade Horn: The Marrying Man* Hunting Hillary Clinton* Faith, Fabrications, and Fantasy (Part 2)* Faith, Fabrications, and Fantasy (Part 1)* Spy Cams on Campus* Spellings Slashes, Dobson Stews* To Hell, and They're Coming Back* Overdosed* Claude Allen in The House* SpongeBob GayPants?

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

PEJ News - C. L. Cook - The Canwest News "Service" is reporting today, Israel's ambassador to Canada, Alan Baker "floated" the idea of Canadian naval vessels "patrolling" the now oil soaked coastal Mediterranean stretch between Lebanon and Syria. Baker's trial balloon, delivered to the press in Ottawa today, is just one facet of Israel's endgame in its "war" against Hezbollah, the attempt to draw international forces to clean up the mess they initiated in battered Lebanon.

www.PEJ.org

Beyond Chutzpah: Israel Hints at Canadian Military Aid Request

C. L. Cook

PEJ NewsAugust 16, 2006

It must seem a perfectly reasonable expectation, from the Israeli government's point of view; isn't that how things work in post-modern warfare? It worked in Yugoslavia, where "NATO" pulverized the population and civil infrastructure, then leaving the remnant Former Republic of Yugoslavia to be garrisoned by someone else, it's crippled economy gifted to off-shore corporate interests. It's what's happened in Afghanistan, and Iraq. So, why not Lebanon?

Canwest makes no mention in today's piece of Canadian civilians slaughtered by the Israeli Defence Force. Not a discouraging word is heard in Kelly Patrick's screed of the unarmed four U.N. peacekeepers deliberately murdered, one of them Canadian. But then, why should Patrick go out further on a limb than the Canadian government, by reminding Canwest's diminishing readership of unpleasant truth's concerning cap-in-hand Israel's authorship of the unfolding disaster over there? For their part, the government of Stephen Harper is staying mum, the pm's director of communications, Sandra Buckler coyly saying, "I don't wish to speculate on calls that have yet to take place."

Under Security Council Resolution SCR 1701, the UN calls for a 15,000 member bolstering of the current United Nations' Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), the same Israel recently targeted, to work in conjunction with the Lebanese Army to ensure Hezbollah does not threaten northern Israel. The UN also proposes the international force disarm Hezbollah and ensure no weapons come into the country. No demands of Israel are apparent, save they train their fire solely on the residents of Prison Camp Palestine, sparing the Lebanese the treatment so familiar there.

Ambassador Baker acknowledges, Canada is "pretty heavily engaged in Afghanistan," but says he still believes "Canada can do more now."

And, I suppose he's right. Now that Iraq is destroyed, and the murderous sanctions regime officially ended, those Canadian naval vessels that worked so diligently to enforce the starvation of the Iraq people can now be resourced to do similar duty in the Med. That is if they can muster the bodies.

According to Canada's military strong man and chief of defence staff, General Rick Hillier, "Whether we have the capability to contribute there would be entirely dependent on the kind of mission, the kind of mandate, and the kind of job that a force would have to do." I guess it "kind of" depends too on whether the Canadian people are prepared to foot the bill for yet another foreign occupation, and whether the Canadian Forces have the boots at command to handle three simultaneous occupations.

Hillier appears on another page, opposite the graveside photo of Corporal Sarah Keller. Keller's husband Bryce is, to use the pm's phraseology when referring to dead Canadians, "one of about 30 killed" so far in Afghanistan. No doubt dying "doing the job he loved." On this page, Hillier opines it will take "years and years" to rebuild that battered nation. These are years on top of the five years Canadian taxpayers have ponied up to piece together the remains of America's bloody bombing campaign and occupation there. How to do that with Canada's tiny military? Not to worry, Rick's boss Stephen "just call me Steve, Dubya" has the answer.

The Conservatives [sic] say they want to see thirteen thousand more boots filled to be shipped overseas. But, recruitment and retention is apparently a problem for the Forces here. The press coverage of one sombre ceremony after another probably isn't helping (one reason perhaps Sandra Buckler advised "Steve" not allow coverage of such dreary events). But Hillier is optimistic about new recruitment directives saying, "We've thrown, if you will, a transformational grenade in the middle of our recruiting process." Sounds great, Rick. Do go on!

Meanwhile in Sherwood Park, Alberta, widowed Corporal Sarah Keller is comforted by her family and friends, commiserating the loss of her husband, one of seven Canadian killed in Afghanistan in August alone. But, perhaps not only seven dead; another attack in Afghanistan wounded six more Canadian soldiers yesterday. There the Canadian "forward operating base," where Canadians have been mounting their search and destroy missions across Panjwaii district, came under mortar fire. And if Canwest is to be believed, there is more to come, as "Taliban" fighters are massing.

Expect this week to hear the official Israeli request for Canadian "aid." And expect too to hear your pm Harper accept the challenge to "keep Canada free, etc." But, this mission won't be free; it will cost Canadian prestige, Canadian tax dollars, and perhaps, as we've seen in Afghanistan and Haiti, Canadian blood as well.

The IDF will have to resume operations in Lebanon if the expanded United Nations force being assembled does not fulfill its obligation to dismantle Hizbullah, an official in the Prime Minister's Office warned on Tuesday.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora and Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah reportedly reached a deal allowing Hizbullah to keep its weapons but refrain from exhibiting them in public. Israeli officials called the arrangement a violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which passed over the weekend and was approved on Sunday by the cabinet.

"The resolution is clear that Hizbullah needs to be removed from the border area, embargoed and dismantled," the official said. "If the resolution is not implemented, we will have to take action to prevent the rearming of Hizbullah. I don't think backtracking will serve any useful purpose. There has to be pressure on Hizbullah to disarm or there will have to be another round."

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni is expected to raise the issue when she meets in New York on Wednesday with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Annan angered Israeli officials when he told Channel 2 on Tuesday that "dismantling Hizbullah is not the direct mandate of the UN," which could only help Lebanon disarm the organization. Annan upset officials further when he said that deploying international forces in Lebanon would take "weeks or months," and not days as expected.

Israeli officials said the IDF would not complete its withdrawal from southern Lebanon until the international force was deployed - even if it took months - to prevent a vacuum in Lebanon that could endanger Israeli civilians. An official in the Prime Minister's Office accused Annan of having an anti-Israel agenda.

"He has been one-sided," the official said. "He tried to be even-handed in a situation that was clearly asymmetrical. When one side committed crimes against humanity and engaged in genocide and the other side defended itself, he cannot treat us in the same manner."

Annan rejected charges of bias, saying, "I have been very hard on Hizbullah and condemned Hizbullah for what it has done. I have condemned Israel for what I consider excessive use of force but it doesn't mean I am taking one side."

Livni will also meet with US diplomatic officials and Jewish leaders during her 24-hour visit. The goals of the trip include advancing Israel's interests in talks on implementing the cease-fire in Lebanon, expediting the deployment of an international force and bringing about the return of the kidnapped IDF soldiers.

Annan is set to make key decisions about the role of the multinational force. Livni had planned to visit New York over the weekend but her original trip was blocked by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Foreign Ministry Director-General Aharon Abramovich said implementation of the cease-fire was "good so far" and "going according to plan." He said Livni wanted to make sure that UNIFIL's effectiveness would be maximized.

According to Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev, the two main tasks of the expanded force would be enforcing a "Hizbullah-free zone" in south Lebanon and an international arms embargo on Hizbullah. He said the resolution detailed the placement of international forces at all crossing points into Lebanon, comprising those from Syria as well as airports and seaports.

"The resolution meets Israel's expectations," Regev said. "The focus now is on ensuring its full and complete implementation. Unfortunately, there have been too many UN resolutions on Lebanon that have gathered dust in the archives and have not changed anything. The challenge now is to bring about the expeditious implementation of 1701."

Under the UN resolution, 15,000 Lebanese troops, with the help of an expanded UNIFIL, would take over the area between the Litani River, 30 kilometers north of Israel, and the frontier to create a buffer zone free of Hizbullah gunmen.

"She will discuss [with Annan] the importance of having the international forces in Lebanon as expeditiously as possible," Regev said of Livni.

Israel wants a speedy deployment "firstly to allow the Israeli troops to pull out of south Lebanon and to ensure the creation of the Hizbullah-free zone in the south... and secondly to make sure that the international arms embargo on Hizbullah is implemented," he said.

"We have to have the resolution translated into reality," Regev said.

Forty-five countries have attended technical sessions for potential contributors to a beefed-up UNIFIL, and the United Nations is hopeful that the first announcements of new troop commitments will be made at a formal meeting expected to take place on Thursday, UN officials said.

France and the United States have sent military planners to meet with UN peacekeeping planners to determine how countries could participate in the proposed 15,000-strong UN force, said a UN official familiar with the process.

The doctrine of operations for the force is reportedly in draft form and will be shared with the potential troop contributors at Thursday's meeting, the UN official said.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters that 28 countries had attended a technical meeting on Saturday and 17 countries had attended a similar meeting on Monday.

"We hope to have a more formal meeting with troop contributors on Thursday," he said.

The UN has not received any formal offers of troops for UNIFIL, although France, Italy, Turkey, Malaysia and Indonesia have indicated they would make significant contributions. A dozen other countries have also expressed a willingness to help.

"We would like to get firm commitments of troops as soon as possible," Dujarric said.

France is expected to lead the expanded force, which currently has 2,000 troops and is commanded by French Maj.-Gen. Alain Pellegrini. But UN officials and diplomats said France had not made any announcement of how many troops it planned to send, and that this was holding up announcements of troop commitments from other countries.

"It's a chicken and egg situation, as it often is in our efforts to generate a force," Dujarric said. "We're dependent on the member states to come up with firm offers... We're in intensive discussions with them, and hopefully we'll flush out and get some firm commitments."

US President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice are also making calls to drum up troops for the expanded UN force, US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton said.

A French colonel started working with UN military planners on Tuesday, and Bolton said the Pentagon was also sending a military planner. A French general is expected at UN headquarters on Wednesday to work as a liaison between the UN Peace-keeping Department and Paris, UN diplomats said.

The IDF will have to resume operations in Lebanon if the expanded United Nations force being assembled does not fulfill its obligation to dismantle Hizbullah, an official in the Prime Minister's Office warned on Tuesday.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora and Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah reportedly reached a deal allowing Hizbullah to keep its weapons but refrain from exhibiting them in public. Israeli officials called the arrangement a violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which passed over the weekend and was approved on Sunday by the cabinet.

"The resolution is clear that Hizbullah needs to be removed from the border area, embargoed and dismantled," the official said. "If the resolution is not implemented, we will have to take action to prevent the rearming of Hizbullah. I don't think backtracking will serve any useful purpose. There has to be pressure on Hizbullah to disarm or there will have to be another round."

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni is expected to raise the issue when she meets in New York on Wednesday with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Annan angered Israeli officials when he told Channel 2 on Tuesday that "dismantling Hizbullah is not the direct mandate of the UN," which could only help Lebanon disarm the organization. Annan upset officials further when he said that deploying international forces in Lebanon would take "weeks or months," and not days as expected.

Israeli officials said the IDF would not complete its withdrawal from southern Lebanon until the international force was deployed - even if it took months - to prevent a vacuum in Lebanon that could endanger Israeli civilians. An official in the Prime Minister's Office accused Annan of having an anti-Israel agenda.

"He has been one-sided," the official said. "He tried to be even-handed in a situation that was clearly asymmetrical. When one side committed crimes against humanity and engaged in genocide and the other side defended itself, he cannot treat us in the same manner."

Annan rejected charges of bias, saying, "I have been very hard on Hizbullah and condemned Hizbullah for what it has done. I have condemned Israel for what I consider excessive use of force but it doesn't mean I am taking one side."

Livni will also meet with US diplomatic officials and Jewish leaders during her 24-hour visit. The goals of the trip include advancing Israel's interests in talks on implementing the cease-fire in Lebanon, expediting the deployment of an international force and bringing about the return of the kidnapped IDF soldiers.

Annan is set to make key decisions about the role of the multinational force. Livni had planned to visit New York over the weekend but her original trip was blocked by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Foreign Ministry Director-General Aharon Abramovich said implementation of the cease-fire was "good so far" and "going according to plan." He said Livni wanted to make sure that UNIFIL's effectiveness would be maximized.

According to Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev, the two main tasks of the expanded force would be enforcing a "Hizbullah-free zone" in south Lebanon and an international arms embargo on Hizbullah. He said the resolution detailed the placement of international forces at all crossing points into Lebanon, comprising those from Syria as well as airports and seaports.

"The resolution meets Israel's expectations," Regev said. "The focus now is on ensuring its full and complete implementation. Unfortunately, there have been too many UN resolutions on Lebanon that have gathered dust in the archives and have not changed anything. The challenge now is to bring about the expeditious implementation of 1701."

Under the UN resolution, 15,000 Lebanese troops, with the help of an expanded UNIFIL, would take over the area between the Litani River, 30 kilometers north of Israel, and the frontier to create a buffer zone free of Hizbullah gunmen.

"She will discuss [with Annan] the importance of having the international forces in Lebanon as expeditiously as possible," Regev said of Livni.

Israel wants a speedy deployment "firstly to allow the Israeli troops to pull out of south Lebanon and to ensure the creation of the Hizbullah-free zone in the south... and secondly to make sure that the international arms embargo on Hizbullah is implemented," he said.

"We have to have the resolution translated into reality," Regev said.

Forty-five countries have attended technical sessions for potential contributors to a beefed-up UNIFIL, and the United Nations is hopeful that the first announcements of new troop commitments will be made at a formal meeting expected to take place on Thursday, UN officials said.

France and the United States have sent military planners to meet with UN peacekeeping planners to determine how countries could participate in the proposed 15,000-strong UN force, said a UN official familiar with the process.

The doctrine of operations for the force is reportedly in draft form and will be shared with the potential troop contributors at Thursday's meeting, the UN official said.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters that 28 countries had attended a technical meeting on Saturday and 17 countries had attended a similar meeting on Monday.

"We hope to have a more formal meeting with troop contributors on Thursday," he said.

The UN has not received any formal offers of troops for UNIFIL, although France, Italy, Turkey, Malaysia and Indonesia have indicated they would make significant contributions. A dozen other countries have also expressed a willingness to help.

"We would like to get firm commitments of troops as soon as possible," Dujarric said.

France is expected to lead the expanded force, which currently has 2,000 troops and is commanded by French Maj.-Gen. Alain Pellegrini. But UN officials and diplomats said France had not made any announcement of how many troops it planned to send, and that this was holding up announcements of troop commitments from other countries.

"It's a chicken and egg situation, as it often is in our efforts to generate a force," Dujarric said. "We're dependent on the member states to come up with firm offers... We're in intensive discussions with them, and hopefully we'll flush out and get some firm commitments."

US President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice are also making calls to drum up troops for the expanded UN force, US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton said.

A French colonel started working with UN military planners on Tuesday, and Bolton said the Pentagon was also sending a military planner. A French general is expected at UN headquarters on Wednesday to work as a liaison between the UN Peace-keeping Department and Paris, UN diplomats said.

Sunday, August 13, 2006

PEJ News - C. L. Cook - So it's come back? Israel sniped this past week at the growing chorus coming out of civilized Europe against their murder spree in Lebanon, and continued practice of routine atrocity in Gaza and the West Bank, with a tart retort to the Germany's, France's, and lesser's, of their own complicity in the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo not so many years ago. The implication is simple enough to see, as is its logical presumption: "My evil is no greater than yours."

Well, then: Bombs away!

www.PEJ.org

"You Did It Too"Israel's Kosovo Redux

C. L. Cook

PEJ NewsAugust 12, 2006

How fitting Israel should retaliate European criticism of its murderous rampage, currently burning nicely, with its most lethal, but rarely used, diplomatic Weapon of Sass Destruction: The Truth.

Europeans, at least those that rule over the major, and aspiring nations of Europe, are complicit in the abortion of justice and abrogation of the duty to Humanity during what was the NATO scourge of the Former Republic of Yugoslavia. Fitting for the lessons learnt, and practiced with precedent-following impunity in Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, and elsewheres.

Apt, when considering the use of cluster bombs, and depleted uranium munitions, drones, and satellites, missiles, and smart bombs, and on, and on, combined as it is with the systematic brutalisation of prisoners, and the deliberate targeting of essential civic services; services like: Water, and sewage; power, and communications; transit routes, and hospitals; houses, schools, fire and police stations; ambulances, fire trucks, and now "any vehicle" piloted by one so desperate to risk flight 'neath the IDF terror being wreaked about her, and her children's ears.

Yes, it sounds a lot like the "ethnic cleansing" of Kosovo.

Appropriate too, remembering the involvement of Osama, and his crew, in complicity with their then-C.I.A. paymasters, and the similar brand of carnage loosed largely against the citizenry. All done then, Israel implies now, with the official imprimatur of both NATO, and the UN.

Just so!

Amazingly, Israel - and, I beg pardon of those Arab and "fringe" Israeli's opposing the fanatical fascism currently made most starkly visible, hath spake two truths in a single day! But, the amazing parallels well exceed that, when looking a little more deeply into the goings-on, both today, and in those benighted days in the Balkans.

In those dark times, an entire people, identify racially, were driven from the land they'd lived upon for millennia; driven wholesale from their purchase. These same were strewn, the survivors of the onslaught, to the winds; scattered to find some new landing, the only certainty being they could not now, nor perhaps ever, go home.

They speaking for the so-called Israeli nation have put on notice all that would dare oppose naked, military conquest, and their neighbours too targeted should they interfere. In Lebanon, Robert Fisk reports today, leaflets falling the heavens, each one an identical indictment of international criminality; each an admission of the abandonment of the Geneva Conventions, the rules that have ostensibly guided the world in this unprecedented time.

Israel's blood-stained ministers are correct in their condemnation of NATO, its members, and the public that allowed the destruction of a nation, all conducted in the name of justice, and based on lies and blatant, criminal deception. They are correct too in wondering: "Why complain of we when doing your dirty business?"

And, that is the heart of it.

The dichotomy is an illusion: "Israel" and "America" are a single entity. This is no news to those living beneath the boot of the rising tide of oppression in those far-flung places. It seems only in the United States, where the results of a recent poll - if you believe in such things - claimed: More than half of "Americans" asked didn't know which year the rather well publicized 9/11 attacks occurred. This of course played in conjunction with the ceaseless 24/7 "news" cycle reportage of the next, newest "terrorist plot;" a convenient distraction from military reversals in Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the continuing hammering of the populace in Occupied Palestine.

What differs, during the most recent outrages against humaneness is the Israeli State's official, literal declaration of war against a civil population has not been seen since the Nazi occupation of Greece. Collective Punishment of civilians is clearly indicated upon the thousands of leaflets dropped before the bombs in Lebanon; as the most knowing English-language reporter from the scene, Robert Fisk reports.

These are clearly open declarations, on the part of the current Israeli leadership, of defiance to any and all conventions yet constructed in hopes of making of this world a more equitable place. And, the lack of effective reaction to these obvious transgressions on the part of the "world" community are a Damnation of collusion in ethnic cleansing; a cleansing some are already calling "Holocaust."

Chris Cook is a contributing editor to PEJ News, and host of Gorilla Radio, a weekly exploration of the muck and mire comprising what is today, laughingly referred to as civilization. You can check the GR Blog here.

In the days after Hezbollah crossed from Lebanon into Israel, on July 12th, to kidnap two soldiers, triggering an Israeli air attack on Lebanon and a full-scale war, the Bush Administration seemed strangely passive. “It’s a moment of clarification,” President George W. Bush said at the G-8 summit, in St. Petersburg, on July 16th. “It’s now become clear why we don’t have peace in the Middle East.” He described the relationship between Hezbollah and its supporters in Iran and Syria as one of the “root causes of instability,” and subsequently said that it was up to those countries to end the crisis. Two days later, despite calls from several governments for the United States to take the lead in negotiations to end the fighting, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that a ceasefire should be put off until “the conditions are conducive.”

The Bush Administration, however, was closely involved in the planning of Israel’s retaliatory attacks. President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney were convinced, current and former intelligence and diplomatic officials told me, that a successful Israeli Air Force bombing campaign against Hezbollah’s heavily fortified underground-missile and command-and-control complexes in Lebanon could ease Israel’s security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American preëmptive attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations, some of which are also buried deep underground.

Israeli military and intelligence experts I spoke to emphasized that the country’s immediate security issues were reason enough to confront Hezbollah, regardless of what the Bush Administration wanted. Shabtai Shavit, a national-security adviser to the Knesset who headed the Mossad, Israel’s foreign-intelligence service, from 1989 to 1996, told me, “We do what we think is best for us, and if it happens to meet America’s requirements, that’s just part of a relationship between two friends. Hezbollah is armed to the teeth and trained in the most advanced technology of guerrilla warfare. It was just a matter of time. We had to address it.”

Hezbollah is seen by Israelis as a profound threat—a terrorist organization, operating on their border, with a military arsenal that, with help from Iran and Syria, has grown stronger since the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon ended, in 2000. Hezbollah’s leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, has said he does not believe that Israel is a “legal state.” Israeli intelligence estimated at the outset of the air war that Hezbollah had roughly five hundred medium-range Fajr-3 and Fajr-5 rockets and a few dozen long-range Zelzal rockets; the Zelzals, with a range of about two hundred kilometres, could reach Tel Aviv. (One rocket hit Haifa the day after the kidnappings.) It also has more than twelve thousand shorter-range rockets. Since the conflict began, more than three thousand of these have been fired at Israel.

According to a Middle East expert with knowledge of the current thinking of both the Israeli and the U.S. governments, Israel had devised a plan for attacking Hezbollah—and shared it with Bush Administration officials—well before the July 12th kidnappings. “It’s not that the Israelis had a trap that Hezbollah walked into,” he said, “but there was a strong feeling in the White House that sooner or later the Israelis were going to do it.”

The Middle East expert said that the Administration had several reasons for supporting the Israeli bombing campaign. Within the State Department, it was seen as a way to strengthen the Lebanese government so that it could assert its authority over the south of the country, much of which is controlled by Hezbollah. He went on, “The White House was more focussed on stripping Hezbollah of its missiles, because, if there was to be a military option against Iran’s nuclear facilities, it had to get rid of the weapons that Hezbollah could use in a potential retaliation at Israel. Bush wanted both. Bush was going after Iran, as part of the Axis of Evil, and its nuclear sites, and he was interested in going after Hezbollah as part of his interest in democratization, with Lebanon as one of the crown jewels of Middle East democracy.”

Administration officials denied that they knew of Israel’s plan for the air war. The White House did not respond to a detailed list of questions. In response to a separate request, a National Security Council spokesman said, “Prior to Hezbollah’s attack on Israel, the Israeli government gave no official in Washington any reason to believe that Israel was planning to attack. Even after the July 12th attack, we did not know what the Israeli plans were.” A Pentagon spokesman said, “The United States government remains committed to a diplomatic solution to the problem of Iran’s clandestine nuclear weapons program,” and denied the story, as did a State Department spokesman.

The United States and Israel have shared intelligence and enjoyed close military coöperation for decades, but early this spring, according to a former senior intelligence official, high-level planners from the U.S. Air Force—under pressure from the White House to develop a war plan for a decisive strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities—began consulting with their counterparts in the Israeli Air Force.

“The big question for our Air Force was how to hit a series of hard targets in Iran successfully,” the former senior intelligence official said. “Who is the closest ally of the U.S. Air Force in its planning? It’s not Congo—it’s Israel. Everybody knows that Iranian engineers have been advising Hezbollah on tunnels and underground gun emplacements. And so the Air Force went to the Israelis with some new tactics and said to them, ‘Let’s concentrate on the bombing and share what we have on Iran and what you have on Lebanon.’ ” The discussions reached the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, he said.

“The Israelis told us it would be a cheap war with many benefits,” a U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel said. “Why oppose it? We’ll be able to hunt down and bomb missiles, tunnels, and bunkers from the air. It would be a demo for Iran.”

A Pentagon consultant said that the Bush White House “has been agitating for some time to find a reason for a preëmptive blow against Hezbollah.” He added, “It was our intent to have Hezbollah diminished, and now we have someone else doing it.” (As this article went to press, the United Nations Security Council passed a ceasefire resolution, although it was unclear if it would change the situation on the ground.)

According to Richard Armitage, who served as Deputy Secretary of State in Bush’s first term—and who, in 2002, said that Hezbollah “may be the A team of terrorists”—Israel’s campaign in Lebanon, which has faced unexpected difficulties and widespread criticism, may, in the end, serve as a warning to the White House about Iran. “If the most dominant military force in the region—the Israel Defense Forces—can’t pacify a country like Lebanon, with a population of four million, you should think carefully about taking that template to Iran, with strategic depth and a population of seventy million,” Armitage said. “The only thing that the bombing has achieved so far is to unite the population against the Israelis.”

Several current and former officials involved in the Middle East told me that Israel viewed the soldiers’ kidnapping as the opportune moment to begin its planned military campaign against Hezbollah. “Hezbollah, like clockwork, was instigating something small every month or two,” the U.S. government consultant with ties to Israel said. Two weeks earlier, in late June, members of Hamas, the Palestinian group, had tunnelled under the barrier separating southern Gaza from Israel and captured an Israeli soldier. Hamas also had lobbed a series of rockets at Israeli towns near the border with Gaza. In response, Israel had initiated an extensive bombing campaign and reoccupied parts of Gaza.

The Pentagon consultant noted that there had also been cross-border incidents involving Israel and Hezbollah, in both directions, for some time. “They’ve been sniping at each other,” he said. “Either side could have pointed to some incident and said ‘We have to go to war with these guys’—because they were already at war.”

David Siegel, the spokesman at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, said that the Israeli Air Force had not been seeking a reason to attack Hezbollah. “We did not plan the campaign. That decision was forced on us.” There were ongoing alerts that Hezbollah “was pressing to go on the attack,” Siegel said. “Hezbollah attacks every two or three months,” but the kidnapping of the soldiers raised the stakes.

In interviews, several Israeli academics, journalists, and retired military and intelligence officers all made one point: they believed that the Israeli leadership, and not Washington, had decided that it would go to war with Hezbollah. Opinion polls showed that a broad spectrum of Israelis supported that choice. “The neocons in Washington may be happy, but Israel did not need to be pushed, because Israel has been wanting to get rid of Hezbollah,” Yossi Melman, a journalist for the newspaper Ha’aretz, who has written several books about the Israeli intelligence community, said. “By provoking Israel, Hezbollah provided that opportunity.”

“We were facing a dilemma,” an Israeli official said. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert “had to decide whether to go for a local response, which we always do, or for a comprehensive response—to really take on Hezbollah once and for all.” Olmert made his decision, the official said, only after a series of Israeli rescue efforts failed.

The U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel told me, however, that, from Israel’s perspective, the decision to take strong action had become inevitable weeks earlier, after the Israeli Army’s signals intelligence group, known as Unit 8200, picked up bellicose intercepts in late spring and early summer, involving Hamas, Hezbollah, and Khaled Meshal, the Hamas leader now living in Damascus.

One intercept was of a meeting in late May of the Hamas political and military leadership, with Meshal participating by telephone. “Hamas believed the call from Damascus was scrambled, but Israel had broken the code,” the consultant said. For almost a year before its victory in the Palestinian elections in January, Hamas had curtailed its terrorist activities. In the late May intercepted conversation, the consultant told me, the Hamas leadership said that “they got no benefit from it, and were losing standing among the Palestinian population.” The conclusion, he said, was “ ‘Let’s go back into the terror business and then try and wrestle concessions from the Israeli government.’ ” The consultant told me that the U.S. and Israel agreed that if the Hamas leadership did so, and if Nasrallah backed them up, there should be “a full-scale response.” In the next several weeks, when Hamas began digging the tunnel into Israel, the consultant said, Unit 8200 “picked up signals intelligence involving Hamas, Syria, and Hezbollah, saying, in essence, that they wanted Hezbollah to ‘warm up’ the north.” In one intercept, the consultant said, Nasrallah referred to Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz “as seeming to be weak,” in comparison with the former Prime Ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Barak, who had extensive military experience, and said “he thought Israel would respond in a small-scale, local way, as they had in the past.”

Earlier this summer, before the Hezbollah kidnappings, the U.S. government consultant said, several Israeli officials visited Washington, separately, “to get a green light for the bombing operation and to find out how much the United States would bear.” The consultant added, “Israel began with Cheney. It wanted to be sure that it had his support and the support of his office and the Middle East desk of the National Security Council.” After that, “persuading Bush was never a problem, and Condi Rice was on board,” the consultant said.

The initial plan, as outlined by the Israelis, called for a major bombing campaign in response to the next Hezbollah provocation, according to the Middle East expert with knowledge of U.S. and Israeli thinking. Israel believed that, by targeting Lebanon’s infrastructure, including highways, fuel depots, and even the civilian runways at the main Beirut airport, it could persuade Lebanon’s large Christian and Sunni populations to turn against Hezbollah, according to the former senior intelligence official. The airport, highways, and bridges, among other things, have been hit in the bombing campaign. The Israeli Air Force had flown almost nine thousand missions as of last week. (David Siegel, the Israeli spokesman, said that Israel had targeted only sites connected to Hezbollah; the bombing of bridges and roads was meant to prevent the transport of weapons.)

The Israeli plan, according to the former senior intelligence official, was “the mirror image of what the United States has been planning for Iran.” (The initial U.S. Air Force proposals for an air attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear capacity, which included the option of intense bombing of civilian infrastructure targets inside Iran, have been resisted by the top leadership of the Army, the Navy, and the Marine Corps, according to current and former officials. They argue that the Air Force plan will not work and will inevitably lead, as in the Israeli war with Hezbollah, to the insertion of troops on the ground.)

Uzi Arad, who served for more than two decades in the Mossad, told me that to the best of his knowledge the contacts between the Israeli and U.S. governments were routine, and that, “in all my meetings and conversations with government officials, never once did I hear anyone refer to prior coördination with the United States.” He was troubled by one issue—the speed with which the Olmert government went to war. “For the life of me, I’ve never seen a decision to go to war taken so speedily,” he said. “We usually go through long analyses.”

The key military planner was Lieutenant General Dan Halutz, the I.D.F. chief of staff, who, during a career in the Israeli Air Force, worked on contingency planning for an air war with Iran. Olmert, a former mayor of Jerusalem, and Peretz, a former labor leader, could not match his experience and expertise.

In the early discussions with American officials, I was told by the Middle East expert and the government consultant, the Israelis repeatedly pointed to the war in Kosovo as an example of what Israel would try to achieve. The NATO forces commanded by U.S. Army General Wesley Clark methodically bombed and strafed not only military targets but tunnels, bridges, and roads, in Kosovo and elsewhere in Serbia, for seventy-eight days before forcing Serbian forces to withdraw from Kosovo. “Israel studied the Kosovo war as its role model,” the government consultant said. “The Israelis told Condi Rice, ‘You did it in about seventy days, but we need half of that—thirty-five days.’ ”

There are, of course, vast differences between Lebanon and Kosovo. Clark, who retired from the military in 2000 and unsuccessfully ran as a Democrat for the Presidency in 2004, took issue with the analogy: “If it’s true that the Israeli campaign is based on the American approach in Kosovo, then it missed the point. Ours was to use force to obtain a diplomatic objective—it was not about killing people.” Clark noted in a 2001 book, “Waging Modern War,” that it was the threat of a possible ground invasion as well as the bombing that forced the Serbs to end the war. He told me, “In my experience, air campaigns have to be backed, ultimately, by the will and capability to finish the job on the ground.”

Kosovo has been cited publicly by Israeli officials and journalists since the war began. On August 6th, Prime Minister Olmert, responding to European condemnation of the deaths of Lebanese civilians, said, “Where do they get the right to preach to Israel? European countries attacked Kosovo and killed ten thousand civilians. Ten thousand! And none of these countries had to suffer before that from a single rocket. I’m not saying it was wrong to intervene in Kosovo. But please: don’t preach to us about the treatment of civilians.” (Human Rights Watch estimated the number of civilians killed in the NATO bombing to be five hundred; the Yugoslav government put the number between twelve hundred and five thousand.)

Cheney’s office supported the Israeli plan, as did Elliott Abrams, a deputy national-security adviser, according to several former and current officials. (A spokesman for the N.S.C. denied that Abrams had done so.) They believed that Israel should move quickly in its air war against Hezbollah. A former intelligence officer said, “We told Israel, ‘Look, if you guys have to go, we’re behind you all the way. But we think it should be sooner rather than later—the longer you wait, the less time we have to evaluate and plan for Iran before Bush gets out of office.’ ”

Cheney’s point, the former senior intelligence official said, was “What if the Israelis execute their part of this first, and it’s really successful? It’d be great. We can learn what to do in Iran by watching what the Israelis do in Lebanon.”

The Pentagon consultant told me that intelligence about Hezbollah and Iran is being mishandled by the White House the same way intelligence had been when, in 2002 and early 2003, the Administration was making the case that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. “The big complaint now in the intelligence community is that all of the important stuff is being sent directly to the top—at the insistence of the White House—and not being analyzed at all, or scarcely,” he said. “It’s an awful policy and violates all of the N.S.A.’s strictures, and if you complain about it you’re out,” he said. “Cheney had a strong hand in this.”

The long-term Administration goal was to help set up a Sunni Arab coalition—including countries like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt—that would join the United States and Europe to pressure the ruling Shiite mullahs in Iran. “But the thought behind that plan was that Israel would defeat Hezbollah, not lose to it,” the consultant with close ties to Israel said. Some officials in Cheney’s office and at the N.S.C. had become convinced, on the basis of private talks, that those nations would moderate their public criticism of Israel and blame Hezbollah for creating the crisis that led to war. Although they did so at first, they shifted their position in the wake of public protests in their countries about the Israeli bombing. The White House was clearly disappointed when, late last month, Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, came to Washington and, at a meeting with Bush, called for the President to intervene immediately to end the war. The Washington Post reported that Washington had hoped to enlist moderate Arab states “in an effort to pressure Syria and Iran to rein in Hezbollah, but the Saudi move . . . seemed to cloud that initiative.”

The surprising strength of Hezbollah’s resistance, and its continuing ability to fire rockets into northern Israel in the face of the constant Israeli bombing, the Middle East expert told me, “is a massive setback for those in the White House who want to use force in Iran. And those who argue that the bombing will create internal dissent and revolt in Iran are also set back.”

Nonetheless, some officers serving with the Joint Chiefs of Staff remain deeply concerned that the Administration will have a far more positive assessment of the air campaign than they should, the former senior intelligence official said. “There is no way that Rumsfeld and Cheney will draw the right conclusion about this,” he said. “When the smoke clears, they’ll say it was a success, and they’ll draw reinforcement for their plan to attack Iran.”

In the White House, especially in the Vice-President’s office, many officials believe that the military campaign against Hezbollah is working and should be carried forward. At the same time, the government consultant said, some policymakers in the Administration have concluded that the cost of the bombing to Lebanese society is too high. “They are telling Israel that it’s time to wind down the attacks on infrastructure.”

Similar divisions are emerging in Israel. David Siegel, the Israeli spokesman, said that his country’s leadership believed, as of early August, that the air war had been successful, and had destroyed more than seventy per cent of Hezbollah’s medium- and long-range-missile launching capacity. “The problem is short-range missiles, without launchers, that can be shot from civilian areas and homes,” Siegel told me. “The only way to resolve this is ground operations—which is why Israel would be forced to expand ground operations if the latest round of diplomacy doesn’t work.” Last week, however, there was evidence that the Israeli government was troubled by the progress of the war. In an unusual move, Major General Moshe Kaplinsky, Halutz’s deputy, was put in charge of the operation, supplanting Major General Udi Adam. The worry in Israel is that Nasrallah might escalate the crisis by firing missiles at Tel Aviv. “There is a big debate over how much damage Israel should inflict to prevent it,” the consultant said. “If Nasrallah hits Tel Aviv, what should Israel do? Its goal is to deter more attacks by telling Nasrallah that it will destroy his country if he doesn’t stop, and to remind the Arab world that Israel can set it back twenty years. We’re no longer playing by the same rules.”

A European intelligence officer told me, “The Israelis have been caught in a psychological trap. In earlier years, they had the belief that they could solve their problems with toughness. But now, with Islamic martyrdom, things have changed, and they need different answers. How do you scare people who love martyrdom?” The problem with trying to eliminate Hezbollah, the intelligence officer said, is the group’s ties to the Shiite population in southern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley, and Beirut’s southern suburbs, where it operates schools, hospitals, a radio station, and various charities.

A high-level American military planner told me, “We have a lot of vulnerability in the region, and we’ve talked about some of the effects of an Iranian or Hezbollah attack on the Saudi regime and on the oil infrastructure.” There is special concern inside the Pentagon, he added, about the oil-producing nations north of the Strait of Hormuz. “We have to anticipate the unintended consequences,” he told me. “Will we be able to absorb a barrel of oil at one hundred dollars? There is this almost comical thinking that you can do it all from the air, even when you’re up against an irregular enemy with a dug-in capability. You’re not going to be successful unless you have a ground presence, but the political leadership never considers the worst case. These guys only want to hear the best case.”

There is evidence that the Iranians were expecting the war against Hezbollah. Vali Nasr, an expert on Shiite Muslims and Iran, who is a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and also teaches at the Naval Postgraduate School, in Monterey, California, said, “Every negative American move against Hezbollah was seen by Iran as part of a larger campaign against it. And Iran began to prepare for the showdown by supplying more sophisticated weapons to Hezbollah—anti-ship and anti-tank missiles—and training its fighters in their use. And now Hezbollah is testing Iran’s new weapons. Iran sees the Bush Administration as trying to marginalize its regional role, so it fomented trouble.”

Nasr, an Iranian-American who recently published a study of the Sunni-Shiite divide, entitled “The Shia Revival,” also said that the Iranian leadership believes that Washington’s ultimate political goal is to get some international force to act as a buffer—to physically separate Syria and Lebanon in an effort to isolate and disarm Hezbollah, whose main supply route is through Syria. “Military action cannot bring about the desired political result,” Nasr said. The popularity of Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a virulent critic of Israel, is greatest in his own country. If the U.S. were to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, Nasr said, “you may end up turning Ahmadinejad into another Nasrallah—the rock star of the Arab street.”

Donald Rumsfeld, who is one of the Bush Administration’s most outspoken, and powerful, officials, has said very little publicly about the crisis in Lebanon. His relative quiet, compared to his aggressive visibility in the run-up to the Iraq war, has prompted a debate in Washington about where he stands on the issue.

Some current and former intelligence officials who were interviewed for this article believe that Rumsfeld disagrees with Bush and Cheney about the American role in the war between Israel and Hezbollah. The U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel said that “there was a feeling that Rumsfeld was jaded in his approach to the Israeli war.” He added, “Air power and the use of a few Special Forces had worked in Afghanistan, and he tried to do it again in Iraq. It was the same idea, but it didn’t work. He thought that Hezbollah was too dug in and the Israeli attack plan would not work, and the last thing he wanted was another war on his shift that would put the American forces in Iraq in greater jeopardy.”

A Western diplomat said that he understood that Rumsfeld did not know all the intricacies of the war plan. “He is angry and worried about his troops” in Iraq, the diplomat said. Rumsfeld served in the White House during the last year of the war in Vietnam, from which American troops withdrew in 1975, “and he did not want to see something like this having an impact in Iraq.” Rumsfeld’s concern, the diplomat added, was that an expansion of the war into Iran could put the American troops in Iraq at greater risk of attacks by pro-Iranian Shiite militias.

At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on August 3rd, Rumsfeld was less than enthusiastic about the war’s implications for the American troops in Iraq. Asked whether the Administration was mindful of the war’s impact on Iraq, he testified that, in his meetings with Bush and Condoleezza Rice, “there is a sensitivity to the desire to not have our country or our interests or our forces put at greater risk as a result of what’s taking place between Israel and Hezbollah. . . . There are a variety of risks that we face in that region, and it’s a difficult and delicate situation.”

The Pentagon consultant dismissed talk of a split at the top of the Administration, however, and said simply, “Rummy is on the team. He’d love to see Hezbollah degraded, but he also is a voice for less bombing and more innovative Israeli ground operations.” The former senior intelligence official similarly depicted Rumsfeld as being “delighted that Israel is our stalking horse.”

There are also questions about the status of Condoleezza Rice. Her initial support for the Israeli air war against Hezbollah has reportedly been tempered by dismay at the effects of the attacks on Lebanon. The Pentagon consultant said that in early August she began privately “agitating” inside the Administration for permission to begin direct diplomatic talks with Syria—so far, without much success. Last week, the Times reported that Rice had directed an Embassy official in Damascus to meet with the Syrian foreign minister, though the meeting apparently yielded no results. The Times also reported that Rice viewed herself as “trying to be not only a peacemaker abroad but also a mediator among contending parties” within the Administration. The article pointed to a divide between career diplomats in the State Department and “conservatives in the government,” including Cheney and Abrams, “who were pushing for strong American support for Israel.”

The Western diplomat told me his embassy believes that Abrams has emerged as a key policymaker on Iran, and on the current Hezbollah-Israeli crisis, and that Rice’s role has been relatively diminished. Rice did not want to make her most recent diplomatic trip to the Middle East, the diplomat said. “She only wanted to go if she thought there was a real chance to get a ceasefire.”

Bush’s strongest supporter in Europe continues to be British Prime Minister Tony Blair, but many in Blair’s own Foreign Office, as a former diplomat said, believe that he has “gone out on a particular limb on this”—especially by accepting Bush’s refusal to seek an immediate and total ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. “Blair stands alone on this,” the former diplomat said. “He knows he’s a lame duck who’s on the way out, but he buys it”—the Bush policy. “He drinks the White House Kool-Aid as much as anybody in Washington.” The crisis will really start at the end of August, the diplomat added, “when the Iranians”—under a United Nations deadline to stop uranium enrichment—“will say no.”

Even those who continue to support Israel’s war against Hezbollah agree that it is failing to achieve one of its main goals—to rally the Lebanese against Hezbollah. “Strategic bombing has been a failed military concept for ninety years, and yet air forces all over the world keep on doing it,” John Arquilla, a defense analyst at the Naval Postgraduate School, told me. Arquilla has been campaigning for more than a decade, with growing success, to change the way America fights terrorism. “The warfare of today is not mass on mass,” he said. “You have to hunt like a network to defeat a network. Israel focussed on bombing against Hezbollah, and, when that did not work, it became more aggressive on the ground. The definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing and expecting a different result.”

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